Marriage
is the great step beyond friendship, and family, and nationality,
but it does not supersede these. Marriage should only give
repose and perfection to the great previous bonds and
relationships. A wife or husband who sets about to annul
the old, pre-marriage affections and connections ruins the
foundations of marriage.--D.H. Lawrence

Prologue

I
liked this story’s first sentence when I tried to write it
the first time—“It was October, the season of
dying.” And it was their anniversary.
Ours, too, I guess. I’ve retained the first sentence
because I think it breathes an inaugural blast of autumn air into
the narrative’s whisper-and-groan invocation, its
forward-facing surge of truly aching for the past. And it’s
as true as I can get to true.

From
there on, however . . .

I’m
trying to say that something’s gone wrong, and I’ve
been trying to fix it. I feel there’s something in
this story that needs to be saved. To give up on the story
is to indulge in the darkest, most seductive hypocrisy.
Write the story. Be the story, I say. It’s very
Zen.

So
here’s what I did.

First
thing: names.

Her
name was Stef, not Jennifer.

Never
Jennifer. A big uh-uh on the Jennifer, nix on the
Jennifer. No way was she a Jennifer. So since you
weren’t able to see the first draft of this paper
dreamscape before I changed it, I must clue you in on this
midstream interlarding of names. In the story that follows,
you’ll read the girl’s name as “Stef,”
but know you would’ve read “Jennifer” had I not
succumbed to this momentary lapse into a hankering after truth in
the process of toggling together this transparent
chameleon-skinned daydream I’m calling the story that
follows.

This
is the problem: I’ve been faking it. That’s why
this writing has rung so hollow—so infantile, so “not
mine”—for so long.

But
not anymore.

Jennifer?

No.

She
was one hundred percent Stef.

Well,
Stefanie. But she told me I could call her Stef. She
had blond hair, short-cropped. Tomboyish, absolutely
alluring. I bumped into her at a campus dance hosted by
some local church organizations affiliated with the College of
Southern Idaho. So, yeah, the setting: Twin Falls,
Idaho. On the south rim of the Snake River Canyon.
Gun racks and Fords, Wranglers and bolo ties. The whole
crap-kickin’ corral, amigo. Circa 1988. It was
a Friday, late, and I was hanging around outside with three
friends. We were freshman, single and all talk. Four
of us, counting me: Darren Veenstra, Terp Whitaken, and Toby
Bergham. They were all from Gooding, but I hailed from the
metropolis of Jerome, home to a Keebler cookie warehouse, several
thousand stinking dairy cattle, and one of only two Tupperware
plants in the country. Veenstra had driven us to the dance
at the assembly hall of Our Lady of Mercy, across from the CSI
campus. Veenstra had driven because he’d had a car, a
pickup actually. Had being entirely different from
owned. And for some reason, the fact that I didn’t
own a car (it was only this last year that I was able to drive my
wife around town in a car I could say I really owned—but
even that’s a lie; it took us both to pay it off) seems
significant now because when I met Stef at this dance, the first
thing I wanted to do was drive, drive, drive. Drive away.
Drive away from the dance, from the canyon’s rim, away from
my three loser campadres over a single airy span of love and
first impressions. Drive away and find our own unpopulated
corner of the universe where we could tell our secrets to each
other. Tell them, loudly. To each other and to the
stars.

I
remember the music: some old Eagles and John Cougar.

Whitaken,
Bergham, Veenstra, and I were loitering around in the
half-crowded lobby of Our Lady of Mercy, shooting the breeze, not
really in the dance, when she strode on rubber heels
out of the darkened assembly hall, smiled at me, and grabbed my
hand.

And
I remember thinking—vaguely, not in any articulate kind of
way—that the combined energy it takes to create a universe
is charged in the moment that a stranger grabs your hand.

Stef
led me awkwardly to the center of the dance floor. Colored,
electric pinholes of light orbited the gym inside of Our Lady of
Mercy.

“I’m
Stefanie,” she said, circling her arms around my neck,
smiling.

“Niles,”
I said, returning the half embrace. “You always take
your dance partners out of the lobby?”

“Not
always,” she said, laughing. “Just tonight.”

“Good
deal,” I said. “Glad tonight happened while I
was in it.”

We
circled under the circling lights—red, blue, maroon.
Moon, stars, disco ball, strobe light. Slow, deliberate
silhouettes swam and coupled on the dark walls inside Our Lady of
Mercy, expanded to freakish circus shapes, and then shrank to
stick figures that shamefully disengaged and retreated on stiff
legs into lonely dejection across the faux chestnut paneling and
open windows of frosted glass. Near the rec hall’s
stage, a long folding table supported a dusty, archaic
smorgasbord of stereo equipment. I saw the usual:
punchbowl, cheeseballs, crackers, dainty powdered donuts, chairs,
and rows of people standing around, heads bent earthward to
scrutinize their multiple predictable histories in the
clairvoyant glare of the gym floor’s candy wax gloss.
Somehow, I wasn’t a part of it. As Stef and I
circled, I glanced out at Veenstra, Bergham, and Whitaken.
They stared back. Later, it was the thing they talked about
the most: She’d walked out of the dance to get me.

We
circled. The lights spun out broken constellations and
wayward meteors on the ceiling, weaving and electrifying a
ragged-edged a universe inhabited by the population of the two of
us, for just that pocket of time. Ephemeral, red, blue,
blaze and shimmer. I didn’t know anyone at Our Lady
of Mercy; I barely knew Veenstra, Whitaken, and Bergham—I
haven’t seen them since. I barely knew the amazing
statuette of the supposed virgin in my arms, barely knew myself.
But because this strange girl named Stef had taken my hand, in
the middle of all that was anonymity and ignorance, I’d
stumbled on a vibrant, humming state of oneness. Without
leaving the room, I’d stepped to the edge of an airy desert
canyon spanned by a sky crammed with stars, summoned to a moment
so illuminating I felt I’d either turn to stone on the spot
or start to erupt in a volley of prayer to the stone goddess in
the circled fire of my arms. I felt like praying and being
prayed to in the same instant.

Stef
had short blond hair, and she was no taller than five foot
something. She had this great smile and straight white
teeth, like a model from a toothpaste ad. Her skin was
light tan. She had slate blue eyes that wavered in and out
of silver under the trick of the lights, and she wore her hair
moussed up into a tight nest of soft spikes, all wrapped up in a
white headband knotted on top. Black skirt, dimpled right
cheek, white socks rolled down like some anachronistic
bobbysoxer. A black suede vest with fringes. She
sported a casual string of black beads, like an afterthought,
around her throat.

“Call
me,” she said, releasing my hand at the end of the song.

I
reached out for her hand, pulled it back.

“What
should I call you?” I said, outrun already by my own
maverick wit.

“You—are
a trip. You know it, right? Take me away from those
three jokers, just for one dance? You’re our
lady of mercy.”

She
smiled and laughed.

Back
in Vestal’s Ford pickup, the talk went shallow.

“See
her body?” Whitaken kept saying, rolling a JB’s
Restaurant toothpick along his bottom lip with his tongue.
The toothpick end was festooned in cheap yellow plastic, the same
stained color of Whitaken’s teeth. Whitaken’s
breath reeked of Wendy’s chili. The lights along Blue
Lakes Boulevard cast a harsh artificial glow of dust and moths
against the deep evening sky, like dance lights without limits.

“Seriously,”
Whitaken kept whining. “Her body! You
see it?”

“Niles,”
Veenstra said, turning left at Mr. Gas. “Thing you
gotta remember is, there’s four of us, one of her.
That, uh, ain’t the right odds, I don’t think.”

“I
love the odds,” I said.

“Odds,”
Bergham said. “Not right. Ratio’s off.”

“Whoa!”
Whitaken rocked back, as we rumbled past the Blue Lakes Mall and
headed for the bridge. Strands of hay flew from the bed of
Veenstra’s pickup, vanishing into the black night behind
us. In a movement both cocksure and flabbergasted, Whitaken
knocked his John Deere cap back on his head. He flicked the
toothpick, thoughtfully, up and down between his lips. In
the glare of the oncoming headlights, his shaved head glistened.
One dusty boot clomped up on the dash. His eyes glowed as
yellow and lonely as the moon.

“You
believe that body?” he said.

Eventually,
I called Stef, asked her out, and got the story. We were
driving in my mother’s Volkswagen Rabbit convertible down
Blue Lakes Boulevard that summer. We cradled some drive-in
food—Arby’s, I think—in our laps, and we were
heading out toward the CSI baseball fields to eat and talk.

“I
have a son,” she said, smiling over at me, her short blond
hair buffeted back by the wind. “Nicholas. He’s
eighteen months, and he’s beautiful.”

“Great,”
I said.

“My
boyfriend—well, husband—we’re separated.
Richie, he’s in California. Cupertino. He’s
trying to get his band going. But we’re separated.
Separated for good.”

“Great,”
I said, oblivious. “This okay?”

“Yeah,”
Stef said. “Fine.”

We
pulled into the CSI baseball parking area, sat on the picnic
benches under the limitless July sky, ate, and watched the team
practice.

“I
love curly fries,” Stef kept saying.

That
summer I was working the drive-in window at the Dairy Queen on
Lincoln Avenue in Jerome. I remember driving my mother
downtown on Main Street, waiting to turn left at Rose’s
Photography Studio, when the story slipped out.

“A
married woman?” my mother said, turning rigid, then
crimson.

“Separated,”
I said, annoyed. “Listen, Mom. I can handle
this. We’re not dating.”

“You’re
calling her—”

“Yeah,
but she’s got a kid. She’s by herself, lives at
home—”

“Well,
when you call someone you’re dating them. A married
woman!”

But
somehow, marriedwoman just didn’t fit Stef,
not in my mind. Wonder, miracle, real maybe. But not
married woman. As I sat there stewing in my mother’s
convertible, I watched the traffic light changed to green, Then,
I turned left and drove slowly down Lincoln past Gano &
Dehlin Insurance, the Sinclair station. We were heading
south toward the Dairy Queen, but I had no idea where I was
really going. And for the most part, I’ve lost what
the rest of the conversation entailed. We passed Washington
Elementary, the old Tupperware plant, out eight miles to the
country club, and then floated like Evel Knievel from canyon rim
to rim for all I can remember. Plummeting too, perhaps.

“We’re
not dating,” I said. “She’s separated.”

“Separated
is still married,” my mom said, pointing to the Food King
parking lot. “Take a left here. I need some
film.”

One
last episode, the last episode: Last time I saw Stef, I
was working the drive-in window. That day, someone came
through, ordered a chicken sandwich, fries, and Coke, and pulled
up to the window.

“Two
dollars, seventy-three cents,” I said, reaching out of the
window.

“Hey!”
she said, smiling.

“Hey!”
I said, brightening. “It’s you. I didn’t
know it was you.”

“Yeah,
well, you couldn’t have. Intercom’s don’t
show your face.”

“Too
bad in your case,” I said. “Yeah, so, what are
you doing here? You know, this is the north. Not your
side of the canyon. People might see you, get the wrong
impression. That cool reputation, you know.”

“Yeah,
well—”

“I’ll
keep it down, though. Won’t let it out.”

“You
know, anytime I do anything cool, it’s always on accident.”

“You’re
lucky. I never do anything cool at all—just
accidents.”

“You
have nice teeth,” she said, laughing.

That’s
the thing I still remember. It’s one of the things
that’s the merciful prologue to some of my worst mornings,
now that life’s gone on, now that my wife and I own a car
and now that life’s wonderful and difficult all at once
because we’ve got children and responsibility. I have
a bad day, and I think: I have nice teeth. Our daughter
gets the croup, and I think: I have nice teeth. It snows
for a week, and I think: I have nice teeth. My wife thinks
I should stop grinning at myself in the mirror so much. But
hey, what do you do when you have nice teeth? Stef—not
Jennifer—said it to my face once. So it’s got
to be true.

“Yeah,”
Stef said, looking up at me through the drive-in window.
“You’ve got great teeth.”

“Hey,”
I said, as she prepared to drive off. “I didn’t
know where you’d, uh, disappeared to. I’ll see
you around, right?”

“Oh
yeah,” she said. “For sure.”

And
I can’t get it down in words. I can’t
accurately describe how Stef looked up at me, really meaning what
she said. But I have to tell you that right there—in
my maroon Dairy Queen T-shirt, hanging out the drive-in window,
all sunlight and hopefulness—I believed she would see me
again. I believed we would drive out toward the canyon rim
someday soon, our hair tossed by the summer wind, the highway
open and free, and our stories, like tumbling trash across the
highway, tossed freely back and forth to each other. So,
I’d ask: Can you have the story without the prologue?
Can you have the two canyon rims without the impossible but
necessary gap between? And now that I own a car (it’s
my wife’s too, yes, I know), now that we own our love and
borrow from each other every day, shelling out little bits to our
children, sharing, borrowing back, taking and giving, counting
spare change and bits of things we forgot we had tucked away in
our pockets, the linty corners of our hearts—now that all
that’s happened, can I really say that my story, our story,
exists without its prologue? I’m tempted to say no.
No, I am saying no. I’m hesitant only because
I’m not sure that it’s “right” thing to
do. But is the “right” thing always the “true”
thing? For instance, right now, I’m thinking I
shouldn’t write this story. That’s what the
prologue in my head says. The voice of the story insists
with a kind of riotous clamor that Stef, my nice teeth, and the
love revealed inside Our Lady of Mercy during that late July in
1988 should be severed from the story of my life now, now that
I’m a car owner, now that I’m really in love, and now
that my mother is still calling me, telling me what married women
need, like, want, dream about, despise. If we were honest
with ourselves, we’d say we don’t really know where
the prologue and the story come together. We’d admit
we don’t understand that windy canyon, that sometimes
dangerous fault line and precipice. So, you see what I’m
saying? Prologue: Stef. Story: my life, wife,
children, car, and mother. I guess it all comes down to
this: Could I have the story of my love and wife without the
prologue of Stef, the saintly and devilish “married woman”?
And when we get to the main story—after the kissing, the
handholding, the blind confessionals and feigned innocence, the
surrender and sacrifice of hearts—why do we think we can go
back and snip the prologue out of our lives, forever, like some
discarded receipt?

Okay,
so no more pretense. See, I see now I was afraid that if I
wrote this story the way it was intended to be written, my wife
and mother would think I was a swinger of sorts. I suppose
I’m writing this largely to testify that what I felt at
that time wasn’t evil. And I don’t think what
Stef felt was evil either. Story, prologue—it’s
all the same. You can’t cut up the story, parcel it
out into little sections like a game of solitaire on a coffee
table. At the juncture between prologue and story, where
love vanishes and flourishes, where the cliff jumpers dwell,
where hands find each other in the dark and fantastic bouquets of
colored light and dance music bloom in the small universe between
the bodies of dance partners, strangers change their bodies for
light. It’s a marriage in a way, like marriage
is—leaving almost everything behind for the sake of what
lies ahead. Because, well, what if we do forget? What
if we make the mistake of editing too much from the story’s
heart, of revising out what we know we felt, what we know we
should let influence our present and future loves, regardless of
the risks?

Story

It
was October, the season of dying. And it was their
anniversary.

It
was also a Friday night.

The
lumbering Oldsmobile—the car Stef referred to as “the
boat”—ground to a stop at the gravel parking
turnout. “The boat” wore a battered armor of
venomous orange side paneling and chrome piping. It was a
two-ton hunk of junk. Gutted by rust, unvacuumed. The
turnout overlooked the canyon, where the rutted tarmac broke off
into battered sagebrush. Stef snapped off the ignition and
heaved open the driver’s side door. She slammed the
damaged door, which threatened to drop from its hinges, and then
jumped over the dented guardrail and scrambled toward the dark
canyon edge. The headlights remained on. The car’s
weak beams cast two hazy bridges of dwindled light into the black
void. Beyond the guardrail, she ran a zigzag pattern
through the light beams, paralleling them and then intersecting
them, like a rock star loping drunkenly toward the edge of the
stage. At the edge, she skidded and stopped. Looking
across from south to north rim, she listened—the crickets,
the falls, the dull silvery drone of the river flowing west
underneath the damaged spotlight of the October moon, the
shattered glow and hushed current five hundred feet below.
She breathed deeply through her nostrils. She exhaled,
slowly. It was her place. His, too, she realized,
shrugging her shoulders. It was their place. It would
always be their place, no matter what had happened or would
happen. It was their cliff—the place she referred to
as “The Pulpit.” Their tree—the ancient
tangled willow overhanging the half-mile wide expanse of rocky
canyon rim, the one she’d named “The Preacher.”
“The Pulpit” for her stepdad, Warren. “The
Preacher” for her mother, who’d never been able to
come to terms with her life. Over a year ago, when she’d
first come here—with him—she’d named the tree
and cliff. They’d named them together.

Instinctively,
she lowered herself to a sitting position.

She
crossed and uncrossed her legs.

The
cliff’s brown stone warmed her skin. All around her,
the stone was marked with the scrawled green and mustard
signatures of lichens and flimsy weeds. She wore favorite
black denim skirt, white socks, black leather shoes, and her
black tank top. She also wore her denim jacket, cut short
up above her waist—the one he’d given her.
She’d worn it last October. That night, they’d
driven in his Ford Pinto out to “The Pulpit” and “The
Preacher” after a gig. She sat on the warm stone,
thinking, remembering, looking around. It’d been a
long time since she’d seen him. But it was their
anniversary nonetheless, and so she felt glad she’d decided
to come back, even though everything inside her—her own
internal voice of self-mockery—had tried to force her to
stay home, had tried to make her forget everything, forget him,
forget what he’d said, what they’d done together.
No, she’d eventually prodded herself. No,
it's our anniversary. So even though it was October,
the season of dying yellow leaves and crusty lichens and living
rock, and even though it was getting colder, she’d come to
celebrate. Even if she’d come as a celebration of
one.

She
thought about the gig that night across the canyon in Jerome.

Weeks
prior, she remembered, his band had played another gig in Twin
Falls at The Ritz on Blue Lakes Boulevard. That night,
three bands had played: The Oatmeal Snakes, Shades of Gray, and
the headliner band, Brixton 19 (who’d changed their name
that same night from “The Bleü” to “Brixton
19” in their VW van on the drive up from Boise). But
even with all the lights, banners, and exotic spectacle, it’d
been nothing compared to what had felt so simple and concentrated
for her, that single-lightbulb love that had burned away the dust
and darkness at her gig, their gig.

She
sat back, remembering the gig, remembering how it had all
started. She shifted on the cliff’s edge and
re-crossed her legs, imitating Buddha, trying to summon a
peaceful groove of wind and water from somewhere. She eased
back, listened to the river below, the soothing night music of
the falls, the crickets that boomed in stereophonics all around
her in the sagebrush and desert floor. The sky, toward the
west, smoldered—a cool, limber purple. The eastern
sky had deepened to a soaring indigo, peppered with star drops.
She rolled her head back, taking it all in—the sky, the
sounds, the breezy desert silence. She thought about him,
what he was doing now, where he was living, and, most of all,
what songs he was playing. Somewhere out there, in this
place he’d called Cupertino, she realized, he was probably
gazing at the night sky, as she was. At this moment, she
realized, they were most likely mapping the same swatches of sky
with their eyes. Her eyes concentrated on a star above the
north rim. That star, she told herself. He’s
looking at that star right now. For a second, she their
anniversary star burn like a drop of ice water in her mind.
Then she let her thoughts swerve back to the gig on the night
they’d met on Main Street in the Jerome Moose Lodge.

That
night, the Jerome Moose Lodge had been packed with a raving crowd
of kids. Outside the door, in the broken glare of an
overhead light, someone had tacked up a sign with a slab of duct
tape: a torn scrap of white posterboard scribbled over in red
magic marker. Tonite from Twin Falls, Swinging Baseball
Bats, 8 PM. 2$. No weapons or illegal substances.
Two cops—one fat and red-haired and the other in a
straw cowboy hat, both with mustaches—had been stationed
outside on the street. Both cops had raked the kids with
critical looks once the crowd had started filing in and the music
had wound up and rocketed loose like a living coil of electric
light and power.

Her
friend, Tiffany, had agreed to go with her. Together,
they’d dressed in Stef’s bathroom in front of the
mirror. They’d acted giddy, she remembered. Too
giddy—competing, sparring, showing off. Stupidly
giddy—laughing, shellacking on too much blue eye-shadow,
comparing bust sizes in the mirror, shifting skirts and black and
pink tank tops. But eventually, when they’d realized
it was almost eight o’clock, they’d screamed and
jumped inside “the boat” and rumbled downtown like
two hijackers in a smoking tank, past the North and South Parks,
past Circle K and Mauldin’s Furniture & Dance. At
the stoplight, they turned right, gunned the engine, and then
screeched to a clanking stop on Main Street, right across from
Central Elementary and kittycorner to the armory where all the
army reserve tanks and transport units waited for action that
would never arrive behind high fences and concertina wire.
Main Street had been littered with cars of all kinds, she
remembered. A parked junkyard, plus two police cars.

Inside,
the Moose Lodge had been a zoo. Just perfect, she
remembered, smiling to herself. And the band!
Swinging Baseball Bats! She smiled wide, laughing out loud,
thinking about how she and Tiffany had reacted when they’d
read the name on the posterboard outside the Moose Lodge.

“Swinging
Baseball Bats,” Tiffany had said. “Sounds
stupid.”

“I
think it sounds cool,” Stef had countered, defending a band
she’d never even heard of before. “Come on.”

Arm
in arm, they’d catapulted themselves into the crowd that,
like a series of hard waves, had heaved back and forth and
threatened to splinter the Moose Lodge’s failing walls.
A single naked light bulb had burned in the room. At the
front of the lodge, on a small elevated stage, the band, Swinging
Baseball Bats, had raged. A trio, she remembered.
Simply a trio: guitar, bass, and drums. The drummer had
hammered away at his set, bucking his head back and forth like an
incensed stallion. He’d worn a white T-shirt with red
rings around the neck and short sleeves, and his pants had been
baggy jeans. He’d rigged up a microphone for backing
vocals, but it had kept getting knocked over as the gig surged
and wailed on. Stef had whirled and floundered, bouncing
off the sweaty gyrating bodies. The music had ground into
her eardrums, pounding her inside out. Hm, she’d
thought to herself. A band with a drummer who sings.
Very cool. At first, she hadn’t paid much
attention to the band, just the music. The lead guitarist—a
squatty kid in baggy cutoff jeans, chain, bright red tube socks,
and an old orange Jerome Recreation District soccer jersey—had
terrorized the right wing of the stag, trying to play and sing at
the same time. “The Wright Guys,” his jersey
had read, with a black decal “8” peeling off the
front like the pierced black tongue of a jungle warrior.
Stef remembered how she’d criticized him in her mind, as
the crowd of kids had swarmed and receded in a mob of seething
energy that rose and ebbed with the music. Just have
fun, she’d told him in her mind. Just have fun
and don’t try to be so cool, so musical. Still,
the guitarist had tried to rock off the performance of his life,
the thing that would get him discovered. For the first hour
and a half, they’d pounded the floor and walls, never
slowing to rest, never seeing any reason for slowing down because
slowing down would have meant stopping the crunching rasp of the
guitar, the thumping of the drums, and the soul-satisfying hammer
of the bass that socked everything into a euphoric vortex of
night, lights, noise, bodies, and floorboards about to break.
She sat on the cliff’s stone parapet, remembering and
tapping out the rhythm of the music on the rock surface with her
fingers, recalling how she had tripped in sync with a groove of
beautiful chaos, how it had only been a year ago during October,
the season of dying, and how she’d had no idea that night
in the Moose Lodge would one day serve as the day of her
anniversary.

A
cool gust of desert wind stirred her.

She
sat up. Her palms went flat against the stone.

She
looked again for their anniversary star, but she couldn’t
find it.

From
behind her, a thin mosquito whine divided the darkness and was
lost on the breeze. She glanced back at “the boat,”
as if someone had wrenched open one of the unoiled doors.
Its rusted bulk behind the guardrail made her sick, made her
remember how embarrassed she’d felt for years of having to
drive such a beast around town. She thought of Warren and
her mother and their shiny red Bronco.

She
shook her head.

They
make me sick, she thought. Absolutely.

The
sound reached her ears again. She tried to block it out,
seal it off behind glass in its own muted sphere. It was a
cry, high and thin and grating. She looked back at the
Oldsmobile, bleary-eyed in the dim headlights still shining out
over the canyon. The car’s bald tires had crushed and
pinned a fan of sagebrush to the asphalt. She strained to
hear the buzzing cry through the concert of breeze, crickets, and
river.

“Baby
James,” she said out loud. She felt the string of her
body grow taut.

Just
once, she thought, gritting her teeth. I wish it
wouldn’t happen this way. And all on our
anniversary.

She
clamped her eyes shut, shaking her head from side to side,
waiting for the whining to subside, waiting for the whining
yellow flame in her head to cool down.

“Baby
James,” she said out loud again, scavenging her soul for
serenity.

She
waited. For a moment longer, she sat there, not looking
back, tensed up in her shoulders, hugging her knees to her chest,
still trying to draw what warmth stored in the cliff’s
brown stone, trying to ward of the descending desert chill for a
little longer. She waited, listened. She listened
until she didn’t hear anything except the wind and the
scissor music of the crickets. Good, she thought.
To exorcise the annoyance threatening to shatter their
anniversary ceremony, Stef returned to panoramic thoughts of the
gig. It had been absolutely the best, she told herself as
objectively as possible. Especially at the climax.
She smiled to herself. Again, she remembered that Friday
night. The Friday. At the climax of the gig,
Stef remembered, Swinging Baseball Bats had suddenly stopped
playing, and the bass player, who’d also been the lead
singer, had stepped forward and announced that they were going to
play the only song they played that had a title: “Heads or
Tails.” At that moment, Stef had really looked the
bass player over. She’d been so struck by his looks
that she had stopped dancing. The waves of bodies had
parted. In the middle of the flailing crowd, she’d
stopped and looked at him up on the stage, the lone objector in a
rampaging riot. He’d worn no shirt, and his bass had
been a black fretless, nicked and worn. He’d carried
it like a golf bag, slung over his shoulder with a brown leather
strap, and he’d worn old green corduroys, which had only
been accented by the red and white elastic band of his boxer
underwear that had kept peeking up over the top whenever he’d
executed a jump or stage dive to accent his playing.

With
little effort, the song was back in her head. A night
encore. The chorus played over in her mind, and she drummed
her hands on the cliff’s surface, imitating the driving
roll of the snare drum, ranting along with the lyrics in her
mind:

Can’t
, can’t, can’t make heads or tails!

Can’t,
can’t, can’t make heads or tails!

At
the climax of the number, the bass player had launched himself
into the crowd, bass and all. Tiffany and Stef had toppled over
into a shrieking heap. The crowd had divided into two
halves, revealing a psychedelic confetti of Coke cans and vending
machine bags, and he’d landed on the dirty floor.
Then he’d gone absolutely berserk. He’d spun
out on the fulcrum of his shoulder blades. He’d
played his fretless like it was an M-16, rolling over on one
shoulder and running around and around in a circle, his
shock-white blond hair on fire. Then he’d rolled over
on his back and pumped his pelvis—bang, bang, bang—up
toward the ceiling, wagging his fretless around like a war sword,
kicking his piston legs and banging his feet against the floor.
At this moment, bedlam had ensued. Immediately, the circle
around him had closed up, and for a second, it appeared as if he
would be trampled by his own fans, consumed by a swarming amoeba
of kids. Spurred on by the maniacal bravura of the band,
Stef had abandoned Tiffany and, lowering her shoulder, bulldozed
her way through the pumping carnival of bodies. Having
tunneled her way to the bassist, she’d seen something else:
a girl. From somewhere in the crowd, a girl in jeans and a
leather jacket, a girl with long black hair, had jumped from the
crowd and straddled him—the bass player—and had
started riding him like a cowgirl on a bucking bronco.
Immediately, Stef had felt incensed with rage and jealousy.
At once, she’d pushed through the crowd, grabbed the
black-haired girl by the shoulder, and pulled her back, looking
into her face as if to say what she felt: Easy—he’s
not yours yet. But then, she’d seen how Swinging
Baseball Bats’ bass player had reacted: like it was all a
joke. His cool reaction alone had calmed her. As Stef
had reached through the crowd to yank the girl off him, he’d
immediately smiled and surrendered his tormented, anguished
howl. Then he’d jumped back up on stage to finish the
set. Stef and the black-haired girl had never crossed paths
again during the remainder of the concert. Later, Stef had
learned his name. She’d heard it being tossed around
in the dance. She’d caught it and held it on her
tongue like a hard candy jawbreaker—Richie. She’d
said it to herself, while dancing: Richie. Outside,
watching the traffic pass in front of Central Elementary and the
courthouse, she’d warbled it to Tiffany, who’d
ignored her: Richie. She’d chanted it to the rural
night as, out on Main Street, the sweat cooled and evaporated off
her upper lip and neck: Richie.

Stef
said it to herself again, remembering. She said it to the
night, to “The Pulpit” and its brown rock-solid
warmth, to “The Preacher” and its swaying willow
body.

“Richie,”
she said.

The
canyon nocturne heard her, accepted her pronouncement without
judgment, carried the wind of her voice around the curve of the
earth, west, down to the faraway city of Cupertino where all
names, including his, wrote the lyrics of the wind.

At
midnight, the concert had ended with the drummer kicking a combat
boot through his bass drum and the lead guitarist jamming his
guitar down the front of his cutoff jeans. The cops had
come in at that point, hands on guns and nightsticks, waiting for
a fight. But nothing had happened. The lights had
glimmered on, and the guitarist and the drummer had hopped down
from the stage and walked down to Sheppeard’s Drive-in for
Rancho Burgers, fries, and lime rickeys. Some of the kids
had gone with them, shuffling off, hands in pockets, chains
jingling in back. Something else, too, Stef remembered,
patting the surface of the cliff with her palms: Tiffany had
disappeared. She’d driven off in the “the
boat,” leaving Stef stranded. Stef remembered how at
first she’d felt angry with Tiffany. But after a
while, she’d decided it was no big deal, and so she’d
resolved to walk home. In less than two minutes, the Moose
Lodge had emptied out between the two cops that had flanked the
door like stone sentries. As the October midnight had
blossomed and settled in, there had remained no evidence that a
concert had just taken place. Stef had walked home alone,
past the armory, past the park.

Only
she hadn’t gotten far.

“Hey,”
he’d said, perched on top of one of the armory tanks.

She’d
stopped, like a bird caught in a flashlight beam. She’d
stared. He’d looked like he’d looked on stage.
Only more approachable, more real. His hair had shone in
the moonlight, bright platinum spiky blond. His thin torso
had looked muscular—like a carved statue’s—from
where he’d perched himself on one of the tank’s
turrets, eating nachos and cheese dip and a drinking a Cherry
Coke Thirst Buster from the Circle K.

“Yeah,”
Stef had said, passing a hand over her short-cropped blond hair,
thinking of her makeup, her clothes, her legs, her eyes, thinking
over everything at once. “Yeah. How’d you
get up there?”

“Easy,”
he’d repeated, nonchalant. “Come on.”

So
he’d showed her. The trick was, Stef had learned, to
carry a blanket with you at all times. From somewhere on
the other side of the chain-link fence, he’d produced a
woolly blue blanket, and he’d draped it over the top of the
fence and helped her over. A prince and his princess.
Hero to stranded maiden. On the other side, they’d
fallen down, bellylaughing. A gob of nacho cheese had
streaked a moon-colored smear across his forehead; she’d
laughed through her nose, snorting. Together, under that
unforgettable October sky, they’d scrambled up on the
turret of the tank to catch the view, to see out along Main
Street over the roof of the Moose Lodge. They’d
talked: about his music, about the name of the band—Swinging
Baseball Bats (“An amazing choice!” Stef had
said)—and anything else that came to mind. Stef had
asked about the black-haired girl who’d straddled him, and
he’d said he had no idea who she was, nor had he wanted to
know. Stef had smiled openly at this, relieved, feeling
small coils of exhilaration spring open inside her ribcage.
They’d shared nachos, shared his Cherry Coke. They’d
looked up at the stars—as she doing now—and had
instantly traded hearts and promises, right there up on top of
that tank turret, while down below them—down below in the
mundane world of cops and parents, school and assignments, and
laws and rules—the world had gone on without them.
For the most part, they’d been happy to let it go. Up
close, he’d looked even better to her: blond hair, smooth
skin, rippling thin torso, red and white boxer band peeking up
above his green corduroys. And the glittering chrome chain
she’d asked him about: a gift from a friend in Cupertino,
the place where his band was headed if things worked out.

Then
things had gotten silly. Both of them—completely
deprived of sleep—had suddenly succumbed to a twin boost of
nervous energy, and had started capering on the top of the
turret, dancing, spinning, doing Irish jigs, launching mock stage
leaps and dives. She’d said the pledge of allegiance,
her hand above her heart. He’d saluted, manning the
tank and shouting out directives to his gunnery crew. Then,
with Stef howling and hoarse with laughter, he’d shimmied
out onto the tank’s gun barrel, dangling upside down from
his knees and raking his armpits like a circus chimp, his mouth
filled with nachos and cheese, his red and white boxers showing a
full four inches above the beltline of his corduroys. In a
heap, they’d collapsed under the tank, him guffawing and
choking on nacho fragments, Stef weeping with laughter.
Somehow, they’d landed on the blue woolly blanket, and
somehow her fingertips had flickered once up and down his torso,
up and down the lacquered frets and fingerboard, the tricky
strings. In the blanket of night she’d tasted nachos,
cheese, and Cherry Coke introduced into her mouth, warm and
comfortable and welcome and new. His hands, her knees.
The beat of the band, in her belly and in his thighs. He’d
led, and she’d followed. Again, again, and one more
time. The rhythm had soared through her soul at a frenzied
pitch and then let out a world of wind like an immense cool sigh,
after which through the reverberations of crickets and distant
traffic and the silent thrum of worms and leaf mold she had
strained to hear a whining sound coming from somewhere, which
she’d mistaken for the amplified diapason of love, for the
thrilling action of tank wheels, for divebombing aircraft, or for
an electric guitar reverberating through the cliffside breezes in
her mind and settling deep in her loins.

She
listened. It was the whining again. Louder, more
persistent.

Stef
stood.

Ruined,
she thought. It was all too much. It always happened
this way. Things always got ruined.

Her
forehead knitted with anger. Now that it was ruined, she
realized, she’d never be alone. All she’d
wanted with him was to never be alone again. That was the
whole reason they’d gotten together. And now, now
that he’d gone, she’d never be alone, ever.
That was the problem. That’s what had ruined it all
for all of them.

Another
gust, blue and sagebrush-light, startled her senses. She
saw the past year condensed into a few seconds: hiding the baby
in her one-bedroom basement apartment on Blue Lakes Boulevard,
around the corner from McDonald’s; a dirty, mullioned
window letting in greasy yellow light; diapers, piles of them, in
Hefty sacks; Warren not coming to the birth; her mom saying
something matter-of-factly—“Has his own kids, you
know”; her mom, nodding in the back hallway, drying a
dinner plate trimmed with purple and blue cyclamen; her mom
saying, “It’s for the best,” initially buying
the whole story about Richie’s mom taking care of the baby;
thinking how they were perfect strangers, never talked, wouldn’t
ever talk; a television screen tuned to a static channel, 3 a.m.;
a screaming kid with red candy smeared on his face in the grocery
line at the Food King; food stamps; W.I.C. checks; the public eye
and humiliation as bright as a tin can of daylight; hoping Richie
wouldn’t ever talk to his mom; Cupertino, Cupertino, and
more Cupertino.

But
now it was ruined.

From
where she stood, she looked across the ragged black expanse of
the canyon, gauging the distance to the north rim, to the river
below.

Hands
on hips, she turned once completely around. The peace of
the moment had been absolutely wrecked. The cool October
night had sapped all the warmth out of her meditative cliffside
perch. She shivered, with cold anger. Why did it
always have to happen this way? The rush of static and
anger rose inside her and plugged her ears. She gritted her
teeth. It was hours past midnight now, for all she knew.
Somewhere in Cupertino, it was night, too. Furious, she
snapped off one last look at the canyon’s beautiful
nighttime panorama and turned back to “the boat.”

The
Oldsmobile still sat like a slab of junk behind the dented
guardrail. The guardrail was marked with yellow and black
warning stripes, which reminded Stef of a yellowjacket.
Fists to the earth, she tromped back through the sagebrush to the
passenger’s side of the car. The old hunk of a car
wasn’t running, but the headlights still glared out into
the airy nothingness over the canyon. She yanked open the
passenger’s side door.

“What!”
she yelled. “What do you want? Why always now?
What!”

The
infant baby boy sat in his car seat and screamed. His
sparky blond hair shone like lightning. He’d been
dressed by his mother in some old pajamas she’d found at a
second-hand charity shop called Lamplight Ministries on Blue
Lakes Boulevard. The worn-out pajamas clung to the baby
boy’s plump, writhing body like a worn-out membrane filled
with holes. His pajamas were splattered with grinning
cartoon animals: bears, lions, birds, ducks. He howled.
His face burned a deep crimson. His mouth gleamed, wide
open and wet. His protracted, agonized wailing stopped only
briefly when he paused to suck in more air to feed his lungs.
The tiny balls of his fists quavered and flailed about at unseen
demons. A silver waterfall trickled out of each eye.
Stef fumed above him.

“What!”
she demanded again. “What do you want?”

Then,
dazzled by the constellations of her own fury, she uttered a cry
of exasperation and slammed the door. Off in the brush, a
killdeer was spooked from its nesting place and sailed on the
fluted, frightened arc of its own cry out over the canyon.
She listened to it go, imagining herself instantly soaring away
from things like worry and Warren and her mother, sprouting
magnificent wings and sacrificing herself in flight for her
young.

Baby
James howled. Stef jammed her hands under her armpits and
folded her arms across her chest. She stomped around to the
front of “the boat.” She sat down on the front
hood with such force that the whole car rocked for a second,
making Baby James’s howling bounce up and down as well.
Good, she thought. She looked off into the canyon,
off into the embrace of the darkness where its promises of
soothing oblivion were intercepted by two rays of light.
>From inside the Oldsmobile, Baby James’s crying had
reached the level of a piercing, terrified shriek. Stef put
her hands to her ears, blocking it out, blocking everything out.
Why wouldn’t it just go away! Frantically, she
searched the cliff’s edge for an answer: the headlights,
the precipice of brown slate and shale, the clinging lichens, the
sagebrush, and the old scraggly willow hanging over the edge.
Then she thought of it: the swinging. Why hadn’t she
thought of it before? She recalled how they had dared each
other to do the swinging before—the first time they’d
come here. From the willow’s branches, out over the
canyon. A full five hundred feet to the bottom! Now,
that had felt like freedom! Full-on, mind-blowing freedom!
They’d done it together, she recalled, just like they’d
wanted to do everything—together. Richie’d had
gone first, running out and grappling for the willow branches,
grasping them desperately to his face, swinging out and kicking
his heels to the stars. Then she had gone—but only
because he’d made her. At first, she’d been
scared, but then she’d let her mind go as blank as the
night sky and had run and jumped out for the willow branches,
swinging out over the canyon, and then back into his arms.
It had felt like true life-or-death happiness. She was sure
it had been nothing like Warren and her mother had done. Or
ever would do.

She
laughed out loud as the thought and decision struck her at once.
It was nothing like smashing a bottle of champagne across the bow
of a ship, but it would have to do. After all, it was their
anniversary. Suddenly, she was smiling. She scanned
the ground, picked up an old half-empty Miller Light bottle, and,
saying a quick dedicatory prayer, hurled the bottle in a long,
looping arc at “the boat,” cracking its windshield.
The bottle, unbroken somehow, plinked off into the sagebrush.

Her
christening complete, she turned to face “The Preacher.”

A
wild wind had suffused her heart. She churned inwardly with
rage, daring, peace, and disorder. She let out a yell and
stepped forward. In the light of the headlights, she struck
a pose. She arched her back, rocking her pelvis back and
propping one hand on her hip. In the darkness, she grabbed
an imaginary microphone—an old model from the radio days
like Swinging Baseball Bats had used—and she jerked toward
her open mouth, singing into it. She could’ve been
the lead singer, she reasoned to herself, rolling her head back,
rocking her body to rhythm of the earth, its quiet raging.
All around her, the bass and guitar and drums and pounding
ecstasy of a thousand kids hammering the floor of the Moose Lodge
rushed on stage with the crickets and whispering sagebrush.
She cradled the microphone to her mouth, cupped it in her hands.
She wailed her mournful confessional to the night, cupping his
head to her face, singing into his listening mouth, her lips
inches from his, their breaths mingled in one warm canyon breeze
scented with starlight. She kicked up gravel and tossed her
head, ramming her head and shoulders forward with every word:
Can’t, can’t, can’t make heads or tails!
Can’t, can’t, can’t make heads or tails!

With
a dramatic flick of her wrist, the imaginary microphone sailed
from her grip. She yanked open her denim jacket and dropped
it to her hips, thrust her head back. Her jacket landed
behind her in the sagebrush. Spinning, stumbling, she faced
the canyon edge. Her audience was waiting—she had
only to perform the climax, the stage dive. With the fully
resurrected music of Swinging Baseball Bats whizzing around like
mad birds of starlight in her head, she pushed off. With
electrified agility, she leaped over the guardrail and ran
unsteadily, but with long strides, toward the canyon rim.
Above the dark echo of her own panting, she heard the
green-silver thread of the river below, her home. The
crippled willow tree swayed at the cliff’s edge, blurred,
and swayed again. At the edge, the sole of her shoe clapped
off the surface of the stone parapet and rang like a tank shot
from the Snake River all the way down to the all-night party
lights of Cupertino, her arms and legs cycling out to catch the
willow branches and swinging stars beyond.

*******

The
next night, a Ford Pinto drove to the south rim. It wore a
distinctly shoddy and anachronistic look—orange with faux
wood side paneling, tattooed with sun and apathy. At the
turnout, it grumbled to a stop, and the headlights clicked off.
Before the headlights dimmed, the driver—a young man who
had recently cut his own platinum blond hair with a steak
knife—jumped out and ran to the cliffside. In his
mind, he was thinking “preacher, pulpit” but wasn’t
sure why, wasn’t sure he cared why. He’d
written a song, a good song that had caused him all kinds of
trouble back in Cupertino, and so he’d had to come back
here—their spot—to sing it, to sing it to the canyon,
to the world, just to try it out. It was, he realized, as
he slung the acoustic guitar strap over his naked shoulder, their
anniversary anyway. So it seemed appropriate. He
fished for the pick in his pocket, a rainbow-toned one he’d
bought in Cupertino. He found it; he gripped it between his
thumb and forefinger, ready to call down shafts of light from
heaven with the first chord. He wore baggy jeans, a chain
and stainless steel Swiss Army pocketwatch hanging of his back
pocket. His tan, sinewy torso shone like the surface of a
river in the moonlight. He looked like a sculpted statue on
the stone overhang, the way he held his guitar, the way he stood,
calling on the canyon scene to inspire him, to listen to his
song. There’d been something wrong in Cupertino,
they’d told him—his band, Swinging Baseball Bats.
There’d been something wrong, something that hadn’t
been there before. After searching for it and struggling to
find the answer, the drummer and guitarist had simultaneously
identified the problem: love. It had been love. Love
had come creeping into his songs, and so together they’d
stomached enough and kicked him out, even though he’d had
no idea what they were talking about, even though he’d used
the same songwriting techniques he’d used back during the
Moose Lodge days.

So
he’d formed a solo act—Swinging Hatchets—and
he’d come back to where he’d begun, to claim a fresh
start and a better outlook.

At
the edge of the cliff, in the face of the canyon night, he drew
in a breath and sang out the first chorus of the song—simply
called “Stef,” a song about getting back
together—that he’d written on the drive back from
Cupertino. But the words and music clashed; the song was
formless; it was a waste. Halfway through, he stopped and,
swinging his guitar around his head like a baseball bat, heaved
it into the five-hundred foot gorge. He listened for the
satisfying sound of its destruction, but heard nothing.

Then
he turned back to his Ford Pinto, slashing his Vans sneakers
through the sagebrush. Maybe I’ll look her up, he
thought, walking back to his Pinto.

Then
he saw something that made him stop.

It
was a car.

An
old rusty orange Oldsmobile was parked at the turnout not far
from his Pinto.

Before
he knew it, he was running—not sure why exactly, in a
plodding jog at first like small child, but then faster in a dead
sprint across the gravel—toward this strange car that, as
he ran, became more familiar with every stride. His shoes
skidded and slapped on the gravel and asphalt. His chain
jingled with the titanium stars in the sky. The cricket
chirps roared like river rapids in his ears, and he could barely
hear the faraway noise of the falls and the wind through the
brush over his own rushed breathing. He banged into the
passenger’s side, yanked open the door, and saw, for a
moment, his own reflection in the glass—a sweaty grin, a
tan face, a blond shock of hair, a trim suntanned torso—replaced
instantly by a smaller version of himself. He saw the small
smiling face looking up at him—the authentic blond hair,
the face weak but still smiling after a full day of sitting there
and watching the canyon, there in what seemed the very center of
the frayed fabric of the cosmos, all happy cartoon bears and
birds and ducks and unwritten songs.

Then
something pushed him back. The earth beneath wavered, rose
up, and slammed into his backside. He rocked back on the
ground, reeling. The cliffside chorus transformed into
wheeling bats and hatchets all around him, a suffocating blanket
of blue night, a missed boat.

Eventually,
he was found, still sitting there, by a curious deputy from the
sheriff’s department, who took the two blond boys—one
in cuffs and the other cradled in his arm—back to the
station on Addison Avenue.

The
deputy was over forty, paunchy, red-faced, balding. He wore
a stiff brown mustache cut straight across his upper lip.
He wore a straw cowboy hat with a crumpled front brim. At
the station, he stood at the booking area desk, sweating in his
tight gray deputy’s uniform, even though he wasn’t
doing anything more strenuous than leaning against the counter.
For the moment, he’d put the teenage boy in a holding
cell. A red-headed, middle-aged woman from social services
had come and taken the baby. The deputy removed his hat,
wiped his forehead with a forearm. He stared down at the
unwaxed oxblood tile, as if searching for the answer in some
magic crossword puzzle or television listing located there.

The
deputy’s supervisor sat at a desk covered with manila
folders, cardboard file boxes, paper, and pens. On the
supervisor’s desk sat a creme-colored phone on which five
red lights flashed in silence.

“Gonna
set that kid right, Warren?” the supervisor called,
snapping his fingers at the deputy and pointing over his desk.
“Or just set around here all night, wasting time?”

“Wish
I could,” the deputy replied, scratching his head, staring
into the holding cell at the blond teenager. Then he
corrected himself. “Set him right, I mean. Not
set around here all night.”

After
an hour of bewildering silence at the station, the bleach-blond
shirtless boy still couldn’t talk, wouldn’t talk.
Eventually the deputy told his supervisor that he’d love to
spend more time trying to figure out the case, but it was
October, his favorite time of the year, the time of year when
everything seemed to take on new life, and that he didn’t
want to sound like a preacher pounding no pulpit or nothing, but
it was his anniversary, and he’d be damned if he was
going to disappoint his wife on the most important night of their
life because he’d had to hang around at work, monkeying
around with some case out of which he couldn’t make heads
or tails.

Matthew
James Babcock: Raised in Jerome, Idaho. Habitually
reminds everyone he was born in San Francisco in 1969 in an
effort to arrogate literary cachet to himself. Teaches
composition, literature, and creative writing at BYU-Idaho in
Rexburg. Currently enrolled in PhD program (Literature and
Criticism) at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. His novella,
Real Rehab, won first place in Rockway Press's annual
contest and will appear in 2006. Stories, poems, and essays have
appeared or will appear in Aethlon; Dialogue; High Horse;
Ibbetson Street; Illuminations; The Pacific Review; Poem; Poetry
Motel; Rattle; The Rejection Quarterly; The South Dakota Review;
The Sow's Ear Poetry Review; Spillway; Trestle Creek Review;
Weber Studies; and Wild Violet.